European Union officials are in an uproar against the Trump administration for targeting abusers of free speech. But Europe clearly has a speech problem, with elites preferring to suppress speech rather than debate uncomfortable facts contradicting their preferred narratives on gender, climate, and immigration.
In announcing the visa restriction sanctions, Secretary of State Marco Rubio explained, “The State Department is taking decisive action against five individuals who have led organized efforts to coerce American platforms to censor, demonetize, and suppress American viewpoints they oppose.”
European leaders might be overreacting, but the problem is not the U.S. visa ban but instead its limited implementation.
Scandinavian countries see themselves as bastions of free speech and liberalism, but they are hypocritical. Apparently, to protect Finland’s commercial interests in Nigeria, Finnish President Alexander Stubb imprisoned Simon Ekpa, a Biafran leader, on spurious terrorism charges. Norway acted similarly, arresting Lucas Ayaba Cho, leader of Cameroon’s long-suppressed Anglophone population. Cho’s followers are often violent, but they have little choice given that Cameroon has, after North Korea and Eritrea, one of the world’s most repressive regimes.
Perhaps no European state has been more cynical than Sweden. Rather than stand up for free speech in the face of Turkish extortion over its NATO application, Swedish leaders succumbed and cracked down on their own Kurdish community, even extraditing one dissident to imprisonment and torture. Switzerland, meanwhile, violates U.S. laws protecting individuals and organizations from frivolous lawsuits intended to censor and intimidate. If Rubio is serious about leveraging U.S. power to protect free speech, he should immediately expand sanctions to Stubb, Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre, his Swedish counterpart Ulf Kristersson, and every member of Switzerland’s Federal Council.
Scandinavian countries and Switzerland may be cynical, but Turkey is malign.
Turks tell a joke about a professor who tweets a mild criticism of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, only to find himself sentenced to 20 years in prison. He asks the prison librarian for several books to pass his time, but the librarian apologizes: “We don’t have these books; we only have their authors.” Today, more than 100,000 Turks languish in prison for their speech and beliefs. Nor are only Turks the target.
Turkish officials have peppered me with lawsuits since 2010, when I criticized Turkey’s Islamist, anti-democratic turn, and slapped the same terrorism charges on me with which Finland and Norway punish speech on behalf of Nigeria and Cameroon. While some think tank scholars and academics will self-censor and ingratiate themselves to maintain access, Turks have now come after numerous American academics for raising questions about Erdoğan’s corruption, abuse of human rights, and complicity in terrorism. State Department ambivalence to this during President Donald Trump’s first term culminated in Erdoğan’s bodyguards and brown shirts attacking protesters at Sheridan Circle, just over a mile from the White House.
As Trump embraces Erdoğan and U.S. Ambassador Tom Barrack parrots Turkish talking points, U.S. officials neglect to call out Erdoğan’s attempt to censor criticism of Muslim Brotherhood extremism as “Islamophobia.”
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Such inconsistency increasingly undercuts U.S. effectiveness. Rubio rightly condemns European censorship of legitimate expression as hate speech, but then gives a pass to its worst offenders. He and Trump promise to stand up for besieged Christians, but then abandon the dissidents, such as Ekpa, whose activism on behalf of Christians under threat is punished by Europe.
To target suppression of speech but ignore its worst abusers is akin to designating the Muslim Brotherhood, but ignoring its Turkish, Qatari, and Yemeni affiliates, or condemning genocide against Christians in Nigeria but then giving a free pass to Azerbaijan and Turkey. Freedom of speech, such as freedom of religion, must be absolute. Unfortunately, White House and State Department implementation continues to fall short.
Michael Rubin is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential. He is the director of analysis at the Middle East Forum and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
